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I never thought I would see the day when O Globo would tell the story of the marriage of organized crime and the dictatorship, so mutually advantageous and still in force today, if you learn to read behind the headlines.

Especially disturbing is the nexus between the racketeers and Carnaval.

If a Carnaval society is funded by a racketeer, as many have been and continue to be, and if the league of Carnaval societies is sponsored by Globo, with which it has an exclusive contract for the broadcast of the event, what hypothesis can we form about Globo — which after all hosts the LIESA Web site?

Perhaps Brazil needs a better RICO statute.

Former miltary torturer, numbers racketeer and LIESA president “Captain” Guimarães (left) with Rio mayor Cesar Maia (second from left): Fat Tuesday and the Rede Globo meet the hog heaven of the hard men.

RIO — Isolated among the troopers he commanded, Captain Aílton Guimarães Jorge ressigned from the Army on March 9, 1981. The gesture of taking off the uniform, sealed an alliance that would alter the landscape of Brazilian organized crime: an alliance between agents of the dictatorship and the numbers rackets with their black-market “animal game.”

Captain Guimarães is one of the most prominent figures in this scenario, but he is not the only one.

Starting in the 1970s, a small platoon of government agents migrated from the torture chambers to the “animal game” lottery — numbers racketeering — bringing with them their brutality, their counterespionage experience and their discipline in the war against leftist groups.

Bicho bankers helped to persecute enemies of the regime, and the dictatorship responded with protection and impunity.

Research carried out in two public archives and the files of the Army Library, as well as affidavits from agents, policemen, victims of repression and experts allows O GLOBO to reveal the details and the persons involved in this process.

At least ten agents, some military and some civilian, operated in the gambling mafia or collaborated with it, to the point where some were named to positions in the hierarchy of the organization. This began to happen just as Geisel was gradually doing away with the repressive organs of the State. Influenced by military doctrine and at the cost of war in the streets, the “animal game” lottery racket — once disunited and informal — became centralized and organized..

Abandoned as a result of the political liberalization or excluded for involvement in common crimes, agents of the repression found shelter in the bicho rackets when the dirty war on the left lost momentum during the 1970s.

Col. Freddie Perdigão Pereira, Captains Ronald José Motta Baptista de Leão and Luiz Fernandes de Brito, along with Ariedisse Barbosa Torres, corporal Marco Antônio Povoleri, civilian police agents Luiz Cláudio de Azeredo Vianna, Mauro Magalhães and Cláudio Guerra, and detective Fernando Gargaglione, together with Captain Guimarães, all with a record reflecting their services rendered to the dictatorship, are mentioned by these sources and documents as members of this platoon organized by the bicho racket.

With the entry of these men, long experience in violence and espionage combined with the methods of the rackets. Guimarães, who had been disgraced by the Army for having commanded a uniformed gang of smugglers, found a way to rise to the top of another hierarchy, without the uniform.

Aniz Abraão David — aka Anísio da Beija-Flor — established his political clan in the Baixada Fluminense and enjoyed complete immunity from police interference in his business interests.

These Maecenas often have nicknames celebrating their support for the escolas de samba.

Beija-Flor, for example, is a mighty, mighty Carnaval juggernaut, but suffered a couple years back from suspicions that Aniz had coerced the vote in the competitive parade results.

Castor Gonçalves de Andrade e Silva — aka, Castor da Mocidade Independente, an intimate of the agents of the repression, negotiated with the regime and received its support when his company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Ângelo Maria Longas — aka o Scrooge McDuck, expanded his business to Niterói with the help of Guimarães.

Murders committed during this period were the product of a mixture of civilian and military interests, and involved bicho bankers and former torturers, including some minor players, like Agostinho Lopes da Silva Júnior, o Guto (murder in June 1979), whose bicho offices in Niterói, São Gonçalo and Itaboraí were taken over by Captain Guimarães.

Some were notorious killings, such as the murders of Misaque José Marques and Luiz Carlos Jatobá (January 1981), who were accused of invading Anísio’s house in Piratininga, Niterói, and the slaying of police officer Mariel Maryscotte de Mattos (October 1981), after an attempt to buy the bicho outlets of Jorge Romeu — aka Elephant George, in Niterói.

Repression of Politicians in the Baixada

The garrison of the First Company of Army Police in the Vila Militar, in Deodor, was the genesis of this phenomenon. In the late 1960s, the PE unleashed a wave of repression against politicians of the Baixada Fluminense, most of them mayors and aldermen removed from office by the regime on corruption charges. It was this clean-up that opened up territory in Nilópolis where Anísio’s clan could assume local political and take over the bicho banks of small-time operators. In the 1970s, Guimarães, Luiz Fernandes andPovoleri, all of them from Army Police and members of a group on trial for extorting smugglers, began to make their moves in the direction of racketeering.

Two of the principal torture centers in Rio, (DOI) and the “House of Death,” the latter set up by Army intelligence in Petrópolis, were also incubators of criminal conspiracy. The House, for example, was the work site of police officer Luiz Cláudio, code named “Laurindo”, who would later become Anísio’s right-hand man. Sgt. Torres, who had taken part in the interrogation team of former legislator Rubens Paiva, disappeared in 1971, is another who exhcanged DOI for organized crime. He became Anísio’s bodyguard and ran the rehearsal space for the escola de samba Beija-Flor.

The results of this alliance would soon be seen as the consolidation of new top leadership — with a verticalization of power, the gradual elimination of small and midsize leaders, the annexation of territories previously fragmented, and the organization of routines.

It is from this period that the biheiros began keeping minutes of their meetings and maps of their franchises, tasks previously performed in an improvised manner. It was also the former agents of the dictatorship that taught the bicho bankers how to bug their opponents.

System of “Accusations, Investigations, and Punishments”

United by the common interests of the rackets and a plan to amass power, Castor, Anísio e Guimarães (who would later take command of the Unidos da Vila Isabel) Founded the League of Independent Escolas de Samba (LIESA) in 1984. Castor was its first president, between 1984 and 1985. Anisio took charge in 1986 and 1987. Guimarães reigned in 1987 and 1993, and then continuously from 2001 to 2007.

— The discretionary power provided by the military to accuse, investigate and punish gave exceptional power to certain groups with ties to police, to the National Intelligence System and to DOI-Codi. Above all, they received technology and know-how to get or fabricate information that cost lives and earned lots of money.

With the help of these operators of the repression and the torture chambers. a nearly unassailable mafia network of bicho banking and spying companies was created. LIESA is patronized and led by racketeers during Carnaval. Ironicallly, during Carnaval no politician will pose with the organizers, although Liesa is financed with public funds — says Maria Celina d’Araújo, a political scientist from PUC-RJ.